Page 6 of The Cottage at Brambleton Hall

She tried Chloe a second time; again, it rang and rang before clicking to voicemail.

Gradually, the signs changed. More of them. Closer together. Industrial estates, turnoffs, the slow build of somewhere bigger. The light had faded, flattening everything into grey and sodium orange. Bristol, soon.

Her hand hovered near the steering wheel controls for a third time before she pressed.

‘Call Jean.’

A lorry loomed up in her mirror, rumbling past in the middle lane. By the time it cleared her, the call was still ringing.

‘Hello, love,’ Jean – Sammy’s foster mother – answered. With her Swansea accent, and a voice full of warmth, she reminded Sammy of a kettle just beginning to sing. Sammy had loved that voice for over twenty years.

Sammy’s biological mother was only sixteen when she gave birth and, having been abandoned by her own parents, struggled to cope. Much of Sammy’s childhood was spent in foster homes and temporary placements; she soon learned not to become too attached to places or people. Each move widened the distance between mother and daughter until, when Sammy turned ten, her mother took a job overseas and Jean stepped in to raise her.

For a while, letters arrived regularly, then less often – letters becoming postcards, postcards becoming birthday cards, until eventually even those stopped. Jean more than filled the void, giving Sammy the stable, loving home she had never known before. But part of Sammy always felt like a temporary guest waiting for the day she would have to leave. So, the moment she turned eighteen, she did, moving into her first flat share with her childhood friend, Chloe.

‘Hi,’ Sammy said, noticing the lightness in her voice. ‘Have you got a minute?’

‘For you? Always.’

The afternoon unspooled in a rush. Sammy described the dog – Jean laughed at the name – the house, the job offer. Jean didn’t interrupt. Not once. When Sammy finished, there was a small, thoughtful pause.

‘Do you want it?’ Jean asked.

‘I . . . well. It’s a lot, isn’t it? And I don’t know if I’m . . .’

‘Do you want it?’ Jean repeated, gently.

Sammy kept her eyes on the road ahead. ‘Hmm,’ she admitted. ‘I think . . . I think I might.’

Jean made a small sound but didn’t speak.

‘He said there’d be a lot to manage,’ she went on. ‘There’s someone who comes up from the village three days a week, Valerie, so I wouldn’t be on my own. She’s going to cover, work full time, when the current housekeeper leaves. She’ll probably be glad to go back to her three days.’

‘Always nice to have a bit of company at work.’

‘She’s been with them fifteen years, so it sounds like she knows the place inside out. It’d be good, actually. Someone to show me the ropes a bit – it’s not exactly small. And the dog, although apparently the owners are travelling around Scotland for the summer, and he’s going with them. But he’ll come back to the Hall whenever they go overseas. Do you think it’s a bit . . . much for me.’

‘It would stretch you,’ Jean said.

‘It would.’

‘But stretching isn’t the same as breaking,’ Jean added. ‘You know that don’t you?’

Sammy checked the mirror, flicked the indicator on and pulled out, overtaking a motorhome before pulling back in. ‘I suppose,’ Sammy said.

‘You can handle more than you give yourself credit for,’ Jean went on. ‘And if you didn’t like it, you could leave. It’s a job, not a life sentence.’

Sammy huffed a laugh. ‘That’s a very comforting way of putting it.’

‘I try.’

They talked about the sort of things Sammy might need to learn, the skills she would need to brush up on, who she could ask to give her a reference, how to prepare for the zoom interview that Magnus had mentioned – the miles slipping by unnoticed.

When they hung up, the motorway stretched ahead, unchanged but quieter somehow, the traffic thinning as the light softened into evening.

Sammy shifted back in her seat, easing the stiffness from her shoulders.

She hadn’t decided yet.